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Since XFCE is already included in Slackware, the maintenance burden is minimum (unless you try to jump to newer version when it's available)
+1. Last time kikinovak asked, I gave the same reason for choosing XFCE over MATE. But if kikinovak is again considering MATE as an alternative, I would guess that he believes that the maintenance burden is manageable for him. So go for MATE if your gut's feeling says so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by willysr
I would prefer to have MATE alongside with XFCE instead of picking one of them
That would be the best option from a user's perspective (but more work for kikinovak).
OK, I'll do my best to keep the two versions, then. I guess the best will be to just leave everything in place so as not to create any drastic changes for existing users, and create a temporary repository layout in http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/beta. And once everything is tested and works fine, move everything over to the main repo branch with all the changes documented.
+--------------------------+
Sat Mar 26 23:04:41 PST 2005
[...]
gnome/*: Removed from -current, and turned over to community support and
distribution. I'm not going to rehash all the reasons behind this, but it's
been under consideration for more than four years. There are already good
projects in place to provide Slackware GNOME for those who want it, and
these are more complete than what Slackware has shipped in the past. So, if
you're looking for GNOME for Slackware -current, I would recommend looking at
these two projects for well-built packages that follow a policy of minimal
interference with the base Slackware system:
http://gsb.sf.net
http://gware.sf.net
There is also Dropline, of course, which is quite popular. However, due to
their policy of adding PAM and replacing large system packages (like the
entire X11 system) with their own versions, I can't give quite the same sort
of nod to Dropline. Nevertheless, it remains another choice, and it's _your_
system, so I will also mention their project:
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/
Please do not incorrectly interpret any of this as a slight against GNOME
itself, which (although it does usually need to be fixed and polished beyond
the way it ships from upstream more so than, say, KDE or XFce) is a decent
desktop choice. So are a lot of others, but Slackware does not need to ship
every choice. GNOME is and always has been a moving target (even the
"stable" releases usually aren't quite ready yet) that really does demand a
team to keep up on all the changes (many of which are not always well
documented). I fully expect that this move will improve the quality of both
Slackware itself, and the quality (and quantity) of the GNOME options
available for it.
Folks, this is how open source is supposed to work. Enjoy. :-)
[...]
MATE is developed by a bunch of folks who couldn't stand any of the GNOME 3.x nonsense, so they decided to fork version 2.x of the project. As far as I can tell, they did a rather nice job. I've been a happy camper with GNOME 2.x for a few years, especially on CentOS. Now with Slackware 14.1 and MATE 1.8, I have that warm and fuzzy "home again" feeling. MATE seems like "GNOME done right".
Have you tested MATE on old hardware? If yes, what specs?
Are you going to migrate all customers?
1. Right, here goes. MATE's file manager Caja is basically the best version of Nautilus. Everything JustWorks(tm), and it even has two-pane navigation, which is Thunar's missing feature my users most often complain about. Directory refresh works way better than under Xfce and KDE, so I don't have to press F5 everytime I download and/or uncompress a file. Navigation in Xfce has a bit of an "amateurish" look and feel, Thunar's icon view is quite ugly, and file names on the desktop get weirdly truncated unless you click on one of them. Some of the basic applications like text editor, PDF viewer, file compression utility, calculator, etc. are already included in the desktop, whereas out of the box Xfce is fairly incomplete. And some other details which I can't think of right now. I'd say MATE allows a better workflow for productive users, but that's probably subjective.
2. MATE works very well on old hardware. By "old", I mean a PC from 1999.
3. I don't like the idea of force-feeding anything, and that is also why I preferred to ask. I wouldn't want to "cut the grass under your feet". So I guess I'll leave the choice to everybody. The only thing I'll probably do is make some look-and-feel adjustments.
Although I am violently happy with the XFCE spin-off of MLED, once I learned that you consider releasing a MATE version I begun to feverishly anticipate its release and started to plan a heavy migration...
Some of the basic applications like text editor, PDF viewer, file compression utility, calculator, etc. are already included in the desktop, whereas out of the box Xfce is fairly incomplete.
Interesting point. When I had my web site running, I had a how-to addressing the topic of adding certain GTK apps to make the stock Xfce more equivalent to the stock KDE, which back then was 3.5.X. MLED basically does much the same with adding those apps.
I have been testing MATE and Cinnamon through Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). I have been impressed with the overall "completeness" of both desktops. Not all of that completeness is due to the two desktops, but I nonetheless remain impressed of the less additional work required to make the system "just work." Another example is suspend-to-ram worked on my T400 without me doing a single thing --- both with closing the lid and pressing Fn+F4.
Quote:
MATE works very well on old hardware. By "old", I mean a PC from 1999.
Nice to hear. I might try to run MATE on a PII (circa 1998) and see what happens. The older hardware systems have so many bottlenecks that most computer users accept that such systems are limited in usefuleness anymore, but I soon expect to deal with people on fixed incomes who can't afford new hardware. They will not be the norm but they will exist.
By the way, and this comment should go in the Cinnamon thread, on LMDE Cinnamon is version 2.0. The distinction is Cinnamon no longer is fully dependent upon GNOME 3, and 3D hardware acceleration no longer is a requirement. Software acceleration is slower but at least bypasses the hardware requirement.
Nice to hear. I might try to run MATE on a PII (circa 1998) and see what happens. The older hardware systems have so many bottlenecks that most computer users accept that such systems are limited in usefuleness anymore, but I soon expect to deal with people on fixed incomes who can't afford new hardware. They will not be the norm but they will exist.
I wouldn't go below a late generation PIII with 512 MB RAM, and that's very low-end. Below that, you'd be better off running one of the specialized distros like Slitaz or Puppy.
By the way, and this comment should go in the Cinnamon thread, on LMDE Cinnamon is version 2.0. The distinction is Cinnamon no longer is fully dependent upon GNOME 3, and 3D hardware acceleration no longer is a requirement. Software acceleration is slower but at least bypasses the hardware requirement.
Cinnamon is more suitable for more modern machines. Intel HD Graphics is more than enough, but having NVidia/ATI GPU + blob driver installed would be more preferred.
Cinnamon is now at 2.2.0, but it will not be part of my CSB (not in the master branch more exactly, but on 2.2.0 branch) since they require newer GTK+3 (3.10) which is not available on Slackware 14.1.
There's one part of cinnamon that still depends on GNOME 3 and that's the bluetooth part. If you don't use BT, then you can be happy no need to install GNOME 3
Distribution: Slackware64-current with "True Multilib" and KDE4Town.
Posts: 9,099
Rep:
At the moment I'm "test diriving" MATE 1.6.1 in PC-BSD, and so far, so good. The first impression is it is an "improved Xfce." I have never been a fan of GNOME, but this could grow on me.
Last edited by cwizardone; 04-14-2014 at 01:18 PM.
At the moment I'm "test diriving" MATE 1.6.1 in PC-BSD, and so far, so good. The first impression is it is an "improved Xfce." I have never been a fan of GNOME, but this could grow on me.
This is exactly my feeling. Let's see if I can persuade folks to make the move.
I was wondering why the installation instructions finish up with:
"Finish the base Slackware installation. Eventually, chroot into the newly installed environment and replace the HUGE kernel by the GENERIC kernel. That's what I usually do."
It doesn't really say why, is it a recommendation for running MLED or just something you do personally?
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